Friday, February 25, 2005

The Power of the Media

Autism... heard of it? If you've been anywhere the NBC world lately, you couldn't have missed it... NBC Nightly News, Today, MSNBC.com, even Scrubs... If you were suspicious like me, you might have thought... is it National Autism Awareness Month? Or did someone high up at GE decide it was time to push Autism to the forefront?

Well, it seems that the latter might have been partially the case. Either as a result of, or coincidentally, Newsweek has also featured it (Newsweek is, by the way, an MSNBC.com partner) and on Monday the CDC started a push for more info on it. The New York Times has taken notice as well.

The CEO of NBC Universal (a vice chair at GE), Bob Wright has a grandson who's autistic.

To me, it seems like more than coincidence. In this case, it's cool because it seems like an entire media empire can be mobilized to bring attention to something, at the very least, bringing greater awareness, or even more, to raise funds.

But what if it were used that effectively to, say, campaign for a particular candidate, or push a particular religion?

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